By John Bredin In our 2011 film The Rebirth of Cinema, my wife and I symbolized Hollywood with the image of a dead, rotting tree that was decaying into the ground. The site we chose was the top of the New Jersey Palisades in Fort Lee, where the movie industry was born a little over
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100 Years of Non-Solitude and Creativity
by J. Taylor Basker Friends, family and fellow creatives celebrated Edith Stephen’s 100th year birthday in Westbeth Artists Housing in Greenwich Village with two parties: one private, for family and close friends in her studio; and the other for the public in the Westbeth Community Room, for fans and neighbors, that included a puppet show
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Five Milestones of Technology That Made Us What We Are Today
By Josef Eisinger© After musing in these pages about the evolution of life on Earth (WestView News, Feb. 2019) and about the rapid pace of technological innovations (WestView News, Jan. 2018), I propose to select in this article five technological landmarks that arguably had the greatest influence on human behavior in their wake. This is,
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Style on the Street: Men in Suits
As the thermostat inches up, the coats come off and men display their sartorial elegance in suits both retro and up-to-the-minute. Text and photos by Karen Rempel.
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Edon Manor Brings Joy Through Shoes
By Karen Rempel Edon Manor is the new refined and ultra-hip babe on the block, with luxury shoes for the most artrageous among us, offered up with a cool vibe. Pink suede couches rim the room and pink hydrangeas adorn the ceiling, with fresh flowers and art books accenting shoes that are truly works of
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Karen’s Quirky Style
By Karen Rempel For me, having fun with fashion is about finding pieces I love at the most unexpected moments, and then combining them with old favorites to come up with an entirely new, unique look. I call this “Karen’s Quirky Style” because you won’t find these ensembles in Vogue, they don’t cost a mint,
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White-Soled Shoes
By Gordon Hughes Now that it’s warming up I’ve been able to sit outdoors on one of the benches at Cafe Panino Mucho Gusto. While sipping a cup of joe the other morning, I was overwhelmed by the number of sneakers with white soles passing by. What is up with this ubiquitous trend? It is
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Save the Date for Renegade Dreamers
By John Gilman 58 years ago Bob Dylan wandered into the precincts of Greenwich Village and almost immediately sparked a major resurgence in folk music in coffeehouses and musical hotspots like Gerde’s Folk City and the Cafe Wha on MacDougal Street. A new film by Karen Kramer entitled Renegade Dreamers chronicles the activities of young
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Burn This Returns to Broadway
By Robert Heide The new Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s play Burn This, which was originally produced in 1987 also on the Great White Way, opened April 16 at the Hudson Theatre at 141 West 44th Street for a 17 week run. Back then it was Wilson’s first play to open on Broadway and it
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Artists at Westbeth Show Exhibit a Variety of Concerns
By Jane Heil Usyk There was an event at the end of March at the Westbeth Gallery on Bethune and West streets. It was the opening of a five-woman art show called “Worlds Seen and Unseen,” which spanned all four rooms of the large gallery. There were five distinct and very different styles of painting.
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George Meets Stanley Kubrick in the Village
By Roger Paradiso On a cool spring day we were sitting around the round table in George’s house on Charles Street. George was sick with a very bad cold. He heard our voices and made his way out of his bedroom sniffling, coughing, and looking a little green. But once I began talking about movies
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The Future of Our Fields
By Lara S. Mullarkey The sun broke through on the morning of Saturday, April 6 just in time to shine on Greenwich Village Little League’s Opening Day. Hundreds of families flooded Pier 40, along with a roster of local politicians including Deborah Glick, Brad Hoylman, Corey Johnson, Brian Kavanagh, Scott Stringer, and Madelyn Wils (president
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The View From the Kitchen
By Isa Covo This month my intention was to write about iconic American songstresses. The idea came to me as I was listening to Billy Holiday, and then the fire at Notre Dame de Paris happened. From the time I heard the news, I was glued to the television and saw the spire fall, the
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My Time at The New School—1958
By Les Plosia If The New School is anything like it used to be, count me a big fan. Then in my upper 20s, I would tool south in my MG convertible on the West Side Highway two evenings a week from my junior editing job at Prentice-Hall publishing house on the New Jersey side
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Israel-Palestine
Dear editors: Hate has no place here. An article on Israel-Palestine in the April issue is a political diatribe one expects from the alt-right or alt-left media, not WestView News. I get the writer’s blog almost daily, and know that is her prejudice, and I might feel sorry for whatever happened to turn her to
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Five Cosmopolitan Artists at Westbeth Gallery in April
By Jane Heil Usyk “Worlds Seen and Unseen” is the name of this show featuring five well-traveled women who have been practicing their art for many years. It opens Friday, March 29th, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and will run from March 29th through April 20th, 2019. The hours of operation are 12:00 p.m. to 6:00
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Greenwich Village Staple Collaborates with NYC’s Music Venue Darlings to Feature Emerging Artists
See them Up-Close and Personal thanks to the New York Presenters Consortium A staple of the downtown new music scene since 2015, the Uncharted Concert Series at Greenwich House Music School (GHMS) has emerged as one of New York’s most exciting and unpredictable live concert series, and it’s right here in Greenwich Village. This year
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The Vessel Arrives
West Village Images by Joel Gordon The $200 million centerpiece of Hudson Yards, The Vessel comes from British designer Thomas Heatherwick and is an inverted honeycomb-like structure of platforms and stairways. There are 75 pieces in total, each piece weighing about 93,000 pounds. It has 2,500 stairs and is 150 feet tall. Other examples can be
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13th Annual Manhattan Film Festival Returns to West Village
The 13th annual Manhattan Film Festival will take place April 24th-May 5th, 2019. Since 2015 the festival has run concurrently with Tribeca, giving filmmakers an alternative opportunity to screen when the entire industry ascends upon New York City! Every year we pride ourselves in programming a diverse film lineup featuring student, emerging, and established filmmakers. The
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Karen’s Quirky Style
The National Arts Club celebrated Jo Weldon’s new book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print, in March, with a leopard-spotted event that had stylish New Yorkers turning out in truck-loads of faux pelts adorning every imaginable garment from boots to hats. Touted as a “neutral,” leopard prints might have been invented as nature’s camo, but
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Mademoiselle Mirabelle Brings Ooh La La to Bleecker Street
By Karen Rempel Mademoiselle Mirabelle alighted on Bleecker Street in mid-January, with a Parisian cocktail party to say “bienvenue” to her new neighbors. The store is owner Nicole Nicholson’s second location. The mother store, Boutique Mirabelle, at 1310 Madison Avenue, has become so successful after 30 years that it practically runs itself. Ready for a
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If I Were Pope
By Donna Schaper I would pray, papally, about what it means to be a Christian. I would take all of my fears of fraud with me. I would ask about the end game—and whether revenge or punishment ever got anybody, anywhere, closer to Jesus. I know the punishmentalists and literalists love to “get back” and
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Keeping Ancient Greek and Latin Alive
By Anastasia Kaliabakos Latin and Greek are dying. These beautiful languages, once studied by the most elite and forward-thinking scholars, have been pushed into the background in schools across the globe in favor of “more useful” modern languages; however, it is of vital importance to maintain, if not increase, the world’s passion for classics. Knowing
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Hey Jude, Lucio’s in the Village with Style
By Karen Rempel Bill Cunningham once said, “It’s not style unless it’s on the street.” The West Village is a glorious neighborhood for people-watching, as many of our neighbors and visitors are likely to be dressed in the unique style that makes New York such a fun place to live. On a recent sunny day,
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Ethnic Pride Portraits
Portraits of people around the world proud of their heritage, showing ethnic and religious pride wearing traditional folk regalia and costumes. Below: Greek, Korean, Native American, Hindu, Chinese and American African Muslim. Other examples can be found on my website www.joelgordon.com. Photo credit © Joel Gordon 2019—All rights reserved.
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A Child’s Stay in the Middle East
By Carol Yost In the early fall of 1955, when I had just turned 10, my family went to Syria on a grant under a 1948 law called the Smith-Mundt Act, or the U. S. Information and Educational Exchange Act. It was designated “an act to promote the better understanding of the United States among
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Osteria 57 Flavors West Village with Mouth-Popping Italian Pescatarian Fusion
By Karen Rempel Osteria 57 has been lighting up West 10th Street with tiny fairy lights for a year and a half, and delighting our mouthbuds with intricate flavors constructed from the earth and sea. I’ve enjoyed many meals and special occasions at owner and host Emanuele’s Sardinian masterpiece of hospitality and epicurean adventures. Last
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Hunting for Treasures at Home
By Annette Benda Fox, Fox Gallery NYC Spring cleaning can be an adventure of discovery! What if your grandmother’s teapot is worth $500 or even $50,000? We have all been surprised by discoveries like that on Antiques Roadshow. Maybe it’s time to find out if you have hidden treasure. Perhaps you need funds or more
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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks
LAST CALL When the show opened last November, New York Times Art Critic Holland Cotter urged “MEET WARHOL, AGAIN, IN THIS BRILLIANT WHITNEY SHOW,” adding “the sweeping retrospective shows a personal side of the Pop master … and reasserts his power for a new generation.” And in the February 15th Times Weekend section, in a
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West Village Original: Marshall W. Mason
By Michael D. Minichiello This month’s West Village Original is director Marshall W. Mason, born in Amarillo, Texas in 1940. Mason co-founded the Circle Repertory Company in New York and was artistic director for 18 years. He directed such plays as The Hot L Baltimore, Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly, As Is, and Burn This. Nominated five
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Theater Book Review: The Transcendent Years
By Robert Heide The title of Marshall W. Mason’s remarkable new book entitled The Transcendent Years—The Circle Repertory Company & The 1960s for which he was the artistic director for eighteen years is his homage to Harold Clurman’s Group Theater book The Fervent Years. Marshall Mason won a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement and
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Seniors Doing Cat Cows
By Stanley Wlodyka Jean-Michel Basquiat couldn’t cut it in a traditional high school setting. After dropping out, the Brooklyn native enrolled at City-As-School, a continuation school in the West Village. At this institution, students up to the age of 22 can earn their diploma going to class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, while interning
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Jim Fouratt’s Reel Deal: Movies that Matter
As I write this I am into day two of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City Utah. I have been coming to Sundance since the early ’90s. It is my favorite film festival in the world. Yes, we are fortunate to have had in New York City two major film festivals—the much loved and
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The Motivation for Political Paintings
By Phil Levine When I turned 40 years old (34 years ago) and living in Denver, I had this conversation with myself. “Philip, you think you’ve been given the gifts of music and art but you haven’t yet opened those gifts.” From that day on I committed myself to doing just that and began taking
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West Village Images by Joel Gordon: Art Illusions and Fantasies
Photographic series of digital computer art, illusions or fantasy featuring close up details taken from architecture and design elements of buildings. Other examples can be found on my website www.joelgordon.com. Photo credit © Joel Gordon 2019—All rights reserved.
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A Sad Farewell to Beloved Cornelia Street Café
by Karen Rempel On January 1, 2019, hundreds of patrons and performers from every decade of the Cornelia Street Café’s 41 years of creative explosion gathered for a final burst of celebration and communion. Many took the stage on the final evening, including the luminary award-winning recording artist Suzanne Vega. She sang “Tom’s Diner,” which
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Everything Old Is New Again on Bleecker St.
By Gordon T. Hughes Peter Allen co-wrote a song titled “Everything Old Is New Again.” The song was a hit and used in a show which made it to Broadway when Hugh Jackman played Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz. But let me get to the subject at hand, Bleecker Street. I have lived
